St. Matthew: A Publican Freed for God’s Kingdom

By Fr. Joy Prakash, OFM –

Fr. Joy Prakash, OFM
Fr. Joy Prakash, OFM

Matthew the publican received “the bread of life and understanding” as food (Sir 15,3) and, out of this same understanding, held a great banquet in his house for our Lord Jesus, for he had received a plentiful share of grace in conformity with his name [which means “gift of God”]. A foretaste of this feast of grace had been prepared by God. Called while he was still seated at his customs post,“he followed the Lord and gave a great banquet for him in his house” (Lk 5,29). Thus he held a banquet – and a splendid one – a royal banquet, as we might say.

Indeed, Matthew is the evangelist who shows us Christ as king, through his family line and through his deeds. At the very beginning of his work he announces: “The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David” (Mt 1,1). Then he describes how the newborn child was worshipped by the Magi under the title ‘king of the Jews’ and then, having woven together all the rest of his story with signs of royalty and parables of the Kingdom, he brings it to an end with words spoken by a king already crowned with the glory of his resurrection: “All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me” (28,18). If you examine his whole composition carefully, then, you will acknowledge that it displays throughout the mysteries of God’s Kingdom.

Nothing surprising about this: Matthew had been a publican; he bore in mind how he had been called from public service of the kingdom of sin to the freedom of the Kingdom of God, the Kingdom of justice. As someone who was not ungrateful to the great king who had set him free, so he faithfully served the laws of his Kingdom.